Two Dissertations · §382 · John Davenant

Cap. IV Arg. 6 Sol: elect known a posteriori — many elect while still unbelieving; Rom. 8:28–30

Sol. When Scripture names designated persons Elect, it fits the word to believers alone — because we know nothing sure of election's secret except a posteriori, from the effects of faith and sanctification. So the Apostle often marks believers as Elect. That does not mean elect and believers must be confused, or that election hangs on foresight of faith as an antecedent condition. We cannot call unbelievers elect as we see them — yet many impenitent and unbelieving are elect in the meantime; true of Paul and of all the elect before efficacious conversion. And since Predestination and Election are used interchangeably in this dispute, Predestinated in salvation-talk is used even of unbelievers. Rom. 8:28ff.: Whom he predestinated, he called; whom he called, he justified — openly sets some Predestinated before vocation, faith, and justification.

Latin

Sol. Quando sacrae Scripturae loquuntur de aliquibus designatis personis tanquam de Electis, hoc vocabulum accommodant ad solos credentes: quia nos de arcano Electionis nihil certi habemus nisi a posteriore, hoc est, ab effectis fidei et sanctificationis. Hinc Apostolus credentes Electorum nomine passim solet notare. Verum inde non efficitur, vel debere confundi electos et credentes, vel electionem ex praevisa fide tanquam conditione antecedanea esse suspendendam. Quamvis enim nos non possumus eos electos vocare, quos videmus incredulos, tamen certum est, multos impoenitentes ac incredulos esse tamen interim electos: quod in Paulo, adeoque in omnibus electis, ante efficacem conversionem, verissimum est. Quin etiam cum Praedestinationis et Electionis vocabula in tota hac disputatione promiscue usurpentur, planum est vocem Praedestinatorum, cum de salute agitur, etiam de incredulis usurpari. Nam cum Apostolus Rom. viii. 28. dicit, Quos Praedestinavit, Vocavit; quos vocavit justificavit, &c. aperte ponit Praedestinatos quosdam antecedenter ad vocationem, fidem et justificationem.

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John Davenant argues from Scripture that Christ's death is a remedy offered to every person, so that anyone who hears the Gospel may be called to believe, and then opens a second dissertation on predestination.

John Davenant (1572–1641) was Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, bishop of Salisbury from 1621, and England's leading delegate to the Synod of Dort. A Reformed theologian of the moderate school, he defended universal atonement language within a Calvinist frame.

The Two Dissertations (1650) press two theses: that Christ died sufficiently for all, and that God sincerely calls all who hear the gospel — against the novel claim that Christ died only for the elect in every sense. They are Davenant's mature statement of the hypothetical-universalist position that divided English Calvinists.

This volume covers the opening of the first dissertation through the close of chapter 3, with the theses on the extent of Christ's death.

Date1572–1641 AD (Bishop of Salisbury; 1650 Cambridge imprint)

The 1683 reprint was not used as base text. No modern English was copied.

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